I'm from the future.

Menu

$100: The New Alternative to Free

I was listening to the Combat Jack podcast over the holidays where his guest was Nipsey Hussle: A Compton rapper famous for successfully releasing a $100 mixtape. Considering mixtapes are used as a free giveaway to promote an artist, selling 1,000 copies at $100 a pop is kind of incredible. Nipsey didn’t just set the price, he turned paying for it into a movement.

During the interview, Nispey said he got the idea of the $100 mixtape from the book, Contagious. The first chapter is about a restaurant that created a $100 Philly Cheesesteak in an attempt to start some buzz. The rest of the book is a typical hand-wavey marketing tome using non-scientific anecdotal evidence to prove the author’s premise about why ideas catch on. Nispey is now working on a book with the author based on his experience selling Crenshaw. Maybe I’ll dig that one.

Still, this got me thinking about a similar trend in games. As we’ve discussed before, in this era of free everything, early access and alpha funding are new ways games are financing development long before completion. In some cases, you pay more for early access than the released game. Take Planetary Annihilation as an example. Early access runs you $90–nearly the price of Nipsey’s mixtape.

In other interviews, Nipsey stated that he wants to be less of a record label and more of the “urban Sanrio.” Essentially selling physical product and using music to promote it. This is a similar model that streetwear brands have used and somewhat reflective of a growing trend in gaming where physical products are starting to become a significant engine of monetization.

In the era of free, the relationship between your players and their wallets is evolving in surprising ways. It turns out, those who want to pay REALLY want to pay. The one-size-fits-all model of $60 games may be dead, but simply making everything a f2p hamster wheel isn’t a blanket solution either.